Review & Contest: THE MAP OF TIME by Felix J. Palma

Every once in a while a book comes out of my TBR pile that almost defies description, and The Map of Time is one. To call it a time-travel mystery would be a disservice. It’s sort of like a mad scientist met an dotty old English professor on the way to pick up a hooker. Errr.....yeah. That’s it. Are you brave enough? Big enough? Bad enough? Read on and win your own mind-blowing copy of this first U.S. release from popular Spanish author Palma, a book author Cherie Priest called “pure, unsettling weirdness.” 

THE OFFICIAL BLURB: Set in Victorian London with characters real and imagined, The Map of Time boasts a triple-play of intertwined plots in which a skeptical H.G. Wells is called upon to investigate purported incidents of time travel and thereby save the lives of an aristocrat in love with a murdered prostitute from the past; of a woman bent on fleeing the strictures of Victorian society; and of his very own wife, who may have become a pawn in a 4th-dimensional plot to murder the authors of Dracula, The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, in order to alter their identities and steal their fictional creations. But, what happens if we change history?  Felix J. Palma raises such questions in The Map of Time. Mingling fictional characters with real ones, Palma weaves a historical fantasy as imaginative as it is exciting, a story full of love and adventure that also pays homage to the roots of science fiction while transporting its readers to a fascinating Victorian London for their own taste of time travel. 

MY THOUGHTS: Okay, I’ll start with the things I wasn’t wild about. The omniscient narrator that pops in now and again bothers me, as it feels kind of old-fashioned. The first of the three sections starts off interesting but drags a little. And the story meanders off into side streets for long periods.

            What I did like—a lot—is the sheer inventiveness of the story. I love mind-blowing fiction that pulls together disparate historical characters and periods with fantastical elements. H.G. Wells on the trail of Jack the Ripper has been done before (anybody remember that great old movie with Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenbergen called Time After Time?) but it’s a good enough idea to tell it again. Throw in some high-toned thievery involving Bram Stoker and stir it up with David Merrick, the Elephant Man (another great movie), and it’s just bizarrely fun.

            Not to mention it has a very cool embossed metallic-inked dust jacket :-)

Brave enough to try a copy of The Map of Time? Tell me if you have a favorite time-travel book or movie, if you have one. It’s the usual the drill: +1 for comment, +1 for blog follow, +1 for Twitter follow @Suzanne_Johnson, and +1 for Tweet or Retweet. Now, get in your time machine and go!